Durba Mitra wins Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Penn Humanities Forum, 2015-6

The History Department is proud to announce that in 2015-16, Dr. Durba Mitra will be the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral fellow at the Penn Humanities Forum and the University of Pennsylvania. The theme for the 2015-16 Penn Humanities Forum is “Sex.” Mitra will be working on her book manuscript, tentatively entitled “Sex and The New Science of Society in Colonial Eastern India.” In her book, she explores the significance of female sexuality to the making of social thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in eastern India. The book explores how colonial authorities and Bengali intellectuals invoked claims to “scientificity” about female sex in the constitution of new legal codes, modes of evidence, and social theories about Indian society. You can read more about her research plans here. Congratulations on this exciting fellowship, Dr. Mitra!